NHS 24 Time wasters

[The Ken]

I normally only need to take the kids to a&e - they get seen fast, under an hour and a half even when busy.
I went in after footy one night and it looked dead and had a 3-4 hour wait. you don't always see the ambulance cases arriving and they get priority for obvious reasons.

 

[highlandsflyer]

Sadly things have come to such a ridiculous pass that if you just turn up at A+E without having first spoken to NHS24 you might well just be pointed to the phone and told to call them.

A friend was saying just yesterday how that happened to him the other week - it was a Sunday afternoon, absolutely nothing doing at A+E (small county hospital) and doctor / nurse / receptionist sitting directly opposite him in the same room doing nothing, but "couldn't" touch him until he'd got a case opened via the call centre in Glasgow (some considerable amount of discussion later.)

What a sorry state things have come to when not only do people make up such ridiculous systems, but even more criminally people actually follow them without protest or question. "Just obeying orders"...

It is ridiculous, bearing in mind the crucial time element.

For example, someone sitting at home who has just had a heart attack may not be aware what has happened and may be disorientated. They or their near by person should be calling 999 not a telephone triage centre.

The system should work in a way so as to discourage people calling the ambulance if not needed, but one experience of being messed around and effectively delayed from seeing a professional would be enough for a lot of people to go straight to 999 the next time.

Where we are results in us having sketchy coverage at best for the emergency services, we don't need an ambulance chuntering off fifty miles because some young mum says their baby is blue because they are panicking and fearful of getting help if they give the symptoms less forcefully.

 

[highlandsflyer]

Phoning NHS 24 will shorten your wait at the A&E, I would recommend it to anyone.

and

It took over three hours despite the fact there were next to no customers.

so where was the shortening of the waiting time? Or would it have been much longer?
My dad recently had an accident. I took him to A&E by car without calling anyone and got hiom sorted there and then. A bit of queing for an xray, but all done within the hour. They even arranged for someone to come to redress the wound a couple of days later. Totally satisfied.

My mother was taken into the triage room as soon as we arrived. She then waited to see a female doctor.

If NHS 24 was not called, she would have been waiting in the queue for triage, after the half a dozen others waiting. (Like I say they were very quiet, but the duty doctor was a bloke, so they had to call up another.)